Losing traction on Technology.. and spinning out of control

As I sit here pondering life, love and my place in the world I often wonder when and how I lost my grip on all this technology! All this new computer technology and new socializing techniques use to fascinate me and I was always thrilled to investigate new things.

I first joined the Internet revolution in 1998 and can remember my first day using ICQ. It was a weird sensation talking to my best friend via the Internet. That same day my little personal experience with this new and strange technology exploded into a new realm when out chat because a 4 way chat and I was introduced to a complete stranger for the first time.. via the internet! I was hooked.

I often wonder what ever happened to ICQ. I use to remember how much fun it was to pass some time using the random feature to randomly find complete strangers to talk to. It was fun meeting new people, making new friends all around the world. I made some great friends, had some relationships, and some hook-ups… all thanks to ICQ.

I can also remember how fascinating it was to use a new chat program called pow-wow that made it easy for lazy people to chat. You see, pow-wow used text-2-speech technology to read back the messages you received. No need to even read anymore!

It wasn’t that I was too lazy to read.. it was the simple fun listening to the computer pronounce words. It was hilarious to send clips for farts, burps or sex jokes. I still remember getting daffy duck getting a sexual favour from some unknown entity.. or maybe himself.. it was never really clear how the “happy ending” came about, but it was funny listening to Daffy having it.

Things spiraled from there. I was hooked and as my friends branched out from ICQ I found myself using MSN, AIM, YAHOO and other programs to keep in touch with my new friends. People also often had 2 different accounts.. One for the general population and one for people they actually wanted to talk to!

Over the years however this became a death spiral. I simply knew too many people on too many applications so I deleted everything except MSN. It seemed to be the in thing. That progressed to the point I am at today. I have 50 times more people on my deleted/blocked list than on my friends list. Of my friends list, I have everyone except 3 people set to invisible and I always log in as invisible and basically use it as an email notification system.

Why the change? Porn. Like everything in life, advertising takes over and ruins everything. . I can guarantee that going online will produce 2 messages in the first 5 minutes from some bot program sending random messages pretending to be some oversexed 18 year old hottie looking to show herself on cam. I often wonder just how stupid people are and how many of these idiots actually respond thinking that they are about to get lucky? When all that may happen is their credit cards get drained or their identity stolen.

Porn is the ultimate evolution of the advertising world. First it was the television when someone realized that people got up during commercials so they cranked up the volume of the ads. You have no idea how much this pisses me! My current pet peeve is TSN and their one self-promotion that runs for about 15 seconds. It seems to run mostly late at night, often when I have the volume just loud enough so I catch key phrases for some item I may be interested in… and then suddenly I am rocked out of my chair by this 15 second, earth pounding barrage that kicks in the sub woofer, rattles the china and wakes the dead.

Then came the doorknockers. My neighbourhood is so filled with kids and schools, recovering drug addicts and “energy” sales people that I don’t even answer my door unless someone calls me first. I thought JW was bad but at least they only came preaching the word of their god a couple times a year and not every single night. Really what other religion goes door to door to sell themselves? Does it really work? If you know the answer, please don’t keep me in suspense. Please come by the house, knock on the door and wait for an answer!

One new technology that I know I could not live without.. Call display! Telemarketers are the cockroaches of the phone system. I love getting calls late at night, during dinner, on the weekend or even worse on a holiday and have someone try to sell me something. These companies have gotten so lazy that it is not even a real person anymore but a recording. If you are lucky you can get transferred to a live person… from India so you can take out your frustrations on them for being disturbed. Therefore today I screen calls based on the caller ID like Balco screening it MLB players prior to random drug testing.

There is one thing that is a pet peeve for many but I am thankful that it exists. SPAM. I love spam. I love those emails about a sick child or someone being paid 5 cents for every email address an article is sent to. You may find this confusing but don’t. I work in the telecommunications industry so you see, the more spam that circles the world, the more bandwidth telco’s need and thus the more equipment they must buy! So please the next time you get annoying spam, think of the poor telecommunications/networking employees that need your help to keep their job.

Something else that is on a similar topic and also fun is junk mail. When you get some JM that has a postage paid return envelope, don’t just toss it into the garbage. Instead fill it up with another flyer from the local pizza place and toss it into the mail. You are promoting the postal system who have to handle the item and the employees that must open the item.. all at the cost of the company that thought it wise to send it in the first place. Funny story.. I use to write “penthouse form” type letters and send them back. J It amused me to no end imagining the prude on the other end being shocked at what she read!

Wow I wonder.. do most people blogs spin this far out of control that you forget the initial reason you started writing? I really don’t know because I don’t really understand why writing blogs are so interesting to people and why blogs from complete strangers are so interesting for people to read?
Anyway maybe the next time I post I can continue onto the 15 different applications like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and more that I must open to keep up with the world and all my unknown friends in it.